The Difficult and the Divine

The Restoration of Order

For four hours yesterday at the thrift store, I put bunches of little toys together, assembling $1.99 grab bags.
I love this so much! In the chaos of life, it calms me to put small things in order. 

And I love working with toys, of course. Though most of the toys donated don't interest me much--Disney figures, McDonald's Happy Meal items, and the like--every so often there's a fun, cool thing--an antique metal plane yesterday, and a couple wood farm animals.

Occasionally (rarely) there's something I want for myself. 
Yesterday I was happy to find the space explorer, above. I have a few others in this set, and three of their Mars rover-type vehicles.

Searching online, I see they're by Playworld, made in Hong Kong,1984. There's a space station too. I don't want that though--it's too big.

A Bit of Toy History

Are these space explorers by Fisher-Price?
I don't think so...

Hm... Interesting history of Fisher-Price:
"Ninety and still into toys: how Fisher-Price pulled a town out of depression", Guardian, 2020.

"In 1930, Irving Price decided he wanted to establish financial security for the small upstate New York village of East Aurora as the Great Depression began to take hold.
He called on children’s book illustrator Margaret Evans Price, who had married him, and a business associate, Herman Fisher. They asked Helen Schelle, owner and manager of the Penny Walker Toy Shop, to join them."

The Penny Walker Toy Shop??? Penny Walker is an ancestor of Penny Cooper, says Penny Cooper!

And, who's Margaret Evans Price?
[googles]
Here's her illustration, "All the Little Boys and Girls in Hamelin Followed the Pied Piper" (1938). Looks familiar--I may have had this book as a child. (Ten more by Margaret Evans Price.)

And this is why it's hard to blog when I don't have open-ended time in the mornings--following up these threads takes a while.
I should try to blog in the afternoons...

The Difficult and the Divine

Speaking of Penny Cooper, I'd never posted this photo of her being helped across a mossy log--from the same trip (staying in a State Park camping cabin) as the girlettes' Forest Funeral for a Mouse.

This trip had been difficult. I'd had a couple sleepless nights trying to figure out how to approach a work assignment that had felt above my level of competency:
I'd been asked (told) I'd start to chaperone a "difficult" student for a couple hours every day. The student had been presented to me as a problem child, and I was advised to come on strong, "show her who's the adult". 

But she reminded me of Divine (below, left), John Water's friend and star. And I’ve got no beef with that. In the middle of my second sleepless night, it came to me: I'll just approach her like that--as a fellow creative.

When I went to work the next morning, my first shift assigned to be with this student [newly 18], I said to her,
"You are an adult, and I am not a prison guard.  Ask me if you need help, otherwise, you do your thing and I'll just follow along."

That's worked beautifully. Far from causing trouble, this student [mostly] tolerates stares, murmurs, and worse, as she travels the halls like a galleon at full sail. (Imagine Divine in high school.)

I admire her, and I’ve told her so.

It'd been a hard camping trip also because it was the first time I realized that not all of my friends agree with me that public schools are like prisons for group-think indoctrination.
That may sound extreme, but I keep pointing out, for instance, that the school doors are locked from the inside.
A lot of people don't have a problem with that, however.

As Maude says, “How the world still dearly loves a cage.”